Pro-life rally shut down for displaying images

One of the images in a pro-life campaign in the Slovak Republic reveals a pile of human skulls under the title “Cambodia” and that’s beside an image of a tiny aborted fetus in a doctor’s gloved hand under the title “Slovakia.”

That image, and others posted on the Slovakian Stop Genocide website, have proven to be too much for authorities in that eastern European nation, where police shut down a pro-life rally over the very real pictures.

Those actions now have triggered a legal action by the Alliance Defense Fund and the Centre for Bio-ethical Reform Europe in the Slovak Republic’s highest court alleging the police acted illegally in order to protect people from the reality of the nation’s abortion industry.

Images of anti-abortion campaign

The legal action cites the work of police in Kosice, an eastern Slovakian town, who broke up the peaceful rally – without legal justification, according to the ADF.

Both the time and location of the rally were within legal boundaries, the ADF reports, and the officers’ only justification for shutting down the rally was that the signs being displayed showed inappropriate images of aborted children.

However, such images are legal under both Slovak and European Convention law, the ADF said.

Roger Kiska, the Europe-based ADF Legal co-counsel in the case, expressed his concern that discrimination is involved.

“Christians and other pro-life advocates should not be discriminated against and silenced for expressing their beliefs and making people aware of the truth,” he said.

The ADF said the recent peaceful pro-life rally did not violate any domestic laws in the Slovak Republic. The “Stop Genocide” rally was held to inform people of the atrocities of genocide and abortion.

Kiska also warned U.S. citizens to not be fooled into thinking such government heavy-handedness only takes place overseas. He pointed out that ADF deals with similar cases in the U.S. frequently.

“Americans should not imagine that this type of government speech control only occurs overseas,” Kiska noted. “ADF fights these types of battles in the U.S. all the time. But if the Constitutional Court in the Slovak Republic rules this police intervention legal, it will be yet another ruling that activist judges could point to in the future as a sort of precedent that U.S. courts should follow.”

Kiska believes the reason the police interfered was because they didn’t like being faced with the horror of abortion.

“Apparently, the police decided that they didn’t want people to be faced with the unexaggerated reality of what abortion looks like,” Kiska added. “The signs were completely legal and simply displayed various images of human atrocities, including what goes on behind closed doors in abortuaries around the world.”